Photonic Analog-to-Digital Conversion

Patrick T. Callahan, Michael L. Dennis,

and Thomas R. ClarkJr.

he analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performs the crucial transformation of

physical electromagnetic signals into ones and zeros that can be processed
by computers. As such, it is of great importance to a vast number of elec-
tronic systems and is often a limiting component for the performance of such systems.
Photonic technology is capable of overcoming many of the limitations in traditional
electronic ADCs and is therefore the subject of much experimental investigation. In
this article we provide a brief overview of ADCs within the context of receiver systems
and of the advantages that photonic technology has to offer, as well as a discussion of
recent developments in research performed at APL that promise to extend the func-
tionality of photonic ADCs. Finally, we present the results of experiments implementing
nonuniform photonic sampling techniques to unambiguously identify signals separated
by many traditional Nyquist zones.

INTRODUCTION
Accurate collection and processing of electromag-
netic information is critical to a wide variety of appli-
cations. Present day RF and microwave sensor systems
must cover many frequency bands, detect and identify
a large range of signal powers, and analyze the signal
information on an ever-decreasing time scale. Simul-
taneously achieving these attributes typically requires
multiple hardware systems, stressing even the most
accommodating platforms and requiring the elimi-
nation of functionality on some. The power of digital
signal processing to deliver increased functionality and
improved system performance has long been recognized.
The resulting preference for digital representation of
signals as the format for receiver system outputs has
elevated the importance of the analog-to-digital con-
verter (ADC), which serves as the interface between the
received analog signals and the digital domain. With
this move to the digital domain, the ADC is and will
continue to be a major bottleneck for many systems.1
The aim of the authors current research is to leverage
the unique benefits of photonic technology to build
ADC systems capable of far greater speed, bandwidth,
and accuracy. In this article we describe novel sampling
techniques developed and implemented at APL that

280 JOHNS HOPKINS APL TECHNICAL DIGEST, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 (2012)
enable the accurate capture and processing of incoming
signals without requiring high-speed electronics.
ELECTRONIC ADCs
ADC Fundamentals
An ADC performs two basic functions: sampling and
quantization of an incoming continuous-time signal.
These consist of the discretization of a signal in time
and amplitude, respectively, as illustrated in Fig.1. The
number of discrete amplitude levels for the ADC is most
often written in terms of the number of bits required to
express the levels in binary form. For example, an ADC
with a resolution of 8bits would have 28= 256 different
amplitude levels to approximate the continuous signal.
The quantization function is therefore completely speci-
fied by two system parameters, the number of bits and
the full-scale voltage of the ADC.
Since most ADCs take a measurement of the signal
amplitude once every m seconds, the timing resolution
is described in terms of this uniform sample rate 1/m.
The sampling function is specified by the frequency of
sampling instants (1/m), the temporal precision of sam-
pling instants, and the duration of the sampling window.
Timing jitter of the uniform clock that defines the sam-
pling instants will lead to errors in the digital represen-
tation of the sampled signal. In general, this effect can
be ignored if the timing jitter dt is small compared with
the error that is introduced by quantization. This condi-
(a) (b)
Amplitude
Amplitude
Time Time
(c) (d)
Amplitude
Amplitude
Time Time
Figure 1.Illustration of sampling and quantization functions.
The quantization function is performed by rounding down to the
nearest discrete level. (a) A continuous-time, continuous-ampli-
tude signal (analog). (b) A discrete-time, continuous-amplitude
signal (sampled). (c) A continuous-time, discrete-amplitude signal
(quantized). (d) A discrete-time, discrete-amplitude signal (digi-
tal). The original analog signal is shown in blue for comparison.
JOHNS HOPKINS APL TECHNICAL DIGEST, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 (2012)
tion can be expressed mathematically as dt<1/(2qpf0),
where f0 is the highest frequency of the input signal and
q is the number of bits of the ADC. If this condition
is not met, the timing jitter of the sampling clock will
degrade the effective resolution of the ADC, hence the
need for high-precision clock sources. For the case of
excessive jitter, the equation can be inverted to find the
effective number of bits.
Another error that can be caused by the sampling pro-
cess is signal aliasing, which is a fundamental limitation
on the ability of uniform sampling to accurately represent
the original continuous-time signal. The sampling theo-
rem states that a signal of finite bandwidth can be com-
pletely reconstructed by an interpolation formula from its
uniformly sampled values, so long as the sample rate is at
least twice the highest frequency component of the orig-
inal signal.2 Another way of stating this theorem is to say
that for a given sample rate fs=1/m, unambiguous identi-
fication of the input signal frequency is only possible for
frequencies at less than half the sample rate fs/2, known
as the Nyquist frequency. After interpolation, sampled
signals of higher frequency will erroneously appear to
have a frequency between 0 and fs/2, known as the
first Nyquist zone. For example, a signal with frequency
f0=fs/2+a (where 0<a<fs/2) will appear to have the
frequency fr=fs/2a after reconstruction. In general,
this alias will have the frequency fr= fs min[mod[f0,fs],1
mod[f0,fs]], where mod[x,y] is the remainder function.
There is therefore a tradeoff between Nyquist frequency
and resolution that must be balanced for uniformly
clocked ADCs: sampling higher-frequency signals makes
the timing jitter requirements increasingly difficult to
satisfy, resulting in a reduced effective number of bits.
Traditional Electronic Receiver Architectures
As an alternative to building an ADC with high-rate
digitization hardware, one approach that is often used is
to interleave several lower-sample-rate digitizers, which
will achieve a high sample rate in aggregate. The chan-
nels are staggered in time, as shown in Fig.2a, collecting
samples at a low rate which are then interleaved using
digital signal processing. This allows for the use of high-
resolution, low-sample-rate digitizers, but it does not
entirely avoid the need for high-precision timing: any
timing or gain errors between channels will lead to spu-
rious signals in the processed spectrum, known as inter-
leaving spurs, which will distort the reconstructed signal.
Another approach, shown in Fig.2b, is to interleave in
the frequency domain, using filters and mixers to down-
convert a region of the spectrum to within the range
of low-rate ADCs. In this architecture, each channel
downconverts a different region of frequency space, using
filters to eliminate aliasing. This approach is especially
well suited to applications in which the signals of interest
consist of narrow-bandwidth information encoded on
high-frequency carriers. However, although this system
281
P.T.CALLAHAN,M.L.DENNIS,ANDT.R.CLARKJR.

(a) Digital interleaving to-digital conversion process.4

Mode-locked lasers capable of
T ADC generating subpicosecond pulse
Input
Output widths with extraordinary pulse-
RF
2T ADC to-pulse timing stability have
.. .. developed to the point that they
nT ADC are now commercially available
from several vendors. Coupled
with high-speed electro-optic
(b) modulators, these pulse sources
ADC
Incoming spectrum LO can provide direct sampling
capability over 50GHz of band-
RF width or wider, with jitter levels
ADC
that enable greater than 10-bit
..
.

LO . resolution systems.
.. .
Frequency
. The basic design for a photon-
ADC ically sampled ADC is shown in
LO
Fig.3a. A stable mode-locked laser
provides a stream of ultrashort
optical pulses, which define the
Figure 2. Electronic receiver architectures for a time-interleaved system (a) and a channel- sampling instants for the signal
ized downconversion system (b). T, time delay; LO, local oscillator. to be digitized. The signal of
interest is sampled by an electro-
successfully reduces the timing jitter requirements on optic modulator, which encodes the RF input onto the
the ADCs and avoids the signal aliasing problem, down- pulse train as an amplitude variation. The encoded opti-
conversion introduces added noise, harmonic distor- cal signal is then converted to the electrical domain
tion, and loss via the mixing process, not to mention the using a high-speed photodiode, the output of which is
fact that such a system is very hardware intensive. The quantized by an electronic ADC. The main benefit of
size, weight, and power requirements of a downconver- this system is that all of the timing characteristics are
sion system can be prohibitive for many applications in controlled by the low-noise optical clock. The sampling
which a wide operational bandwidth is needed. time is set by the pulse width and the bandwidth of
the electro-optic modulator, the sampling rate is set by
the pulse repetition rate, and the timing jitter is set by
PHOTONIC SOLUTIONS the jitter of the laser. Although the photonic sampling
As has been investigated at
length in Ref. 3, the use of pho- (a) RF input
tonic technology in analog-
to-digital conversion can be
organized into four broad cat- Optical
EOM ADC
egories: photonics-assisted ADCs, clock
in which photonic components Stable mode- Electro-optic High-speed
augment the capabilities of an locked laser amplitude modulator photodiode (PD)
electronic ADC that is respon-
PD ADC
sible for both the sampling and 1
(b) RF input
quantization functions; photonic 2 468 2
Interleaving/processing

sampling with electronic quanti- 1357

3
zation; electronic sampling with
Optical switch

4
photonic quantization; and pho- Optical
EOM
tonic sampling and quantization. clock 5
This article will focus on pho- 6
tonic sampling with electronic 7
quantization. It has long been rec- 8
ognized that the ultrashort pulses
generated by mode-locked lasers
can be of great utility to the sam- Figure 3. Traditional photonic-sampled ADC architectures. (a) Basic photonic link. (b) Time-
pling function within the analog- demultiplexed system.

282 JOHNS HOPKINS APL TECHNICAL DIGEST, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 (2012)
 PHOTONIC ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERSION

improves the timing noise of the system, the architecture
of Fig.3a does not reduce the rate at which the quantiza-
tion function must take place. Because this simple archi-
tecture relies on a single electronic ADC to quantize the
photodiode output, the ADC must be clocked at the
sampling rate. For continuous broadband signals, such
as high-data-rate communications, the aliasing prob-
lem once again necessitates a high sample rate and thus
high-speed electronics. If the information bandwidth is
small compared with the carrier frequency, a technique
known as photonic downsampling can be used. This is
most useful for systems in which the carrier frequency
is known to be in some fixed band and the information
on the carrier occupies a bandwidth less than half the
sample rate. In this case the mode-locked laser and the
modulator accurately sample the incoming signal below
its Nyquist rate, allowing the operational bandwidth of
the photodiode and electronic ADC to be significantly
reduced. An RF filter before the electro-optic modula-
tor can be used to prevent signals outside the frequency
band of interest from aliasing into the bandwidth of the
ADC. This technique allows for information encoded
on high-frequency carriers to be captured with high pre-
cision without the use of high-speed electronics or RF
downconversion hardware, but it is inherently limited to
applications that require only a relatively narrow opera-
tional bandwidth.
As with the all-electronic (a)
out aliasing. Uniform sampling is simply not capable of
achieving this goal with a single ADCchannel.
THEORY: NONUNIFORM SAMPLING
Randomized Sampling Techniques
Nonuniform sampling techniques can defeat alias-
ing of high-frequency carriers while sampling well below
their Nyquist rate, allowing the sample rate require-
ment of the system to be dictated by the bandwidth of
the encoded data on the incoming signal rather than by
its carrier frequency. The basic concept behind nonuni-
form sampling is illustrated in Fig.4. Figure4a shows an
example of uniform sampling in which several signals
of different frequencies could all equally have produced
the same set of samples; there is no way to determine
the frequency of the original signal from these samples
alone. This is another formulation of the signal alias-
ing problem described in Electronic ADCs. However,
if we allow the sampling instances to deviate from the
uniform times (denoted by {ti} in the figure), it is clear
that only one of the candidate frequencies could have
produced this new set of samples. This result is shown in
Fig.4b, where the nonuniform sample times are denoted
in red by $ t li . . Nonuniform sampling, coupled with the

ADC, time demultiplexing into

several interleaved channels
can reduce the rate requirement
for individual ADCs, as well
as the operational bandwidth t
needed for the photodiode.
An example of such a system
is shown in Fig. 3b, where the
demultiplexing is accomplished
using an optical switch.5,6 t0

t1

t2

t3

t4
Another method that has been t0' t1' t2' t3' t4'
used for an interleaved pho- (b)
tonic ADC relies instead on a
sequence of pulses at different
wavelengths such that the opti-
cal switch is replaced by a wave-
length demultiplexer.7 Both of
these architectures suffer from t
the limitations common to all
interleaved systems, in particu-
lar path-mismatch of time and
amplitude between channels,
which can lead to unwanted t0 t1 t2 t3 t4
spurs in the reconstructed
spectrum. What is needed is a Figure 4. Illustration of nonuniform sampling. Shown as gray dots in panel a are the samples
method for sampling below the obtained for a uniform sampling process at the rate 1/, whose sampling instants are shown
Nyquist rate that has a wide on the time axis as {ti}. Red dots in panel b denote the samples obtained for a nonuniform
operational bandwidth with- sampling process, whose sampling instants are shown in red as {ti}.

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283
P.T.CALLAHAN,M.L.DENNIS,ANDT.R.CLARKJR.

appropriate reconstruction algorithms, can therefore
determine the original carrier frequency of a sampled
signal without sampling at twice the frequency of inter-
est. Although there are several possible ways to sample
nonuniformly, optimal reconstruction of a signal with an
arbitrary carrier frequency will only be achieved for sam-
pling processes that meet certain statistical requirements.
A more complete theoretical investigation of the statis-
tical merits of various nonuniform sampling techniques
can be found in Ref.8 and in much more mathematical
detail in numerous papers on compressive sampling.9,10
Signal Reconstruction
An intuitive method for signal reconstruction involves
the Fourier decomposition of the nonuniformly sampled
signal by projecting onto a function space and perform-
ing a least-squares analysis. This is simply a best fit of
the data to a set of frequencies. The basis functions are
constructed by using the vector of nonuniform sampling
instants and a set of frequencies {fi} chosen to be ana-
lyzed. Choosing sines and cosines as the basis functions,
a matrix of these transforms can be formed asfollows:
R cos (2 f t )
1 1 cos (2 f1 t 2) g cos (2 f1 t N) V
S W
S sin (2 f1 t 1) sin (2 f1 t 2) g sin (2 f1 t N) W
 = S h h j h W ,
S W
Scos (2 fM t 1) cos (2 fM t 2) g cos (2 fM t N)W
S sin (2 fM t 1) sin (2 fM t 2) g sin (2 fM t N) W
T X
where {tk} are the known sampling instants. Note that
the number of frequencies M in the analyzed set is
directly related to the bandwidth and frequency resolu-
tion considered in the reconstruction algorithm. In order
for reconstruction to be possible, M must be less than
half the number of samples N, 2M < N. Letting c denote
the vector of Fourier coefficients and y the vector of
sampled data, the optimal estimate of the unknown
coefficients can be obtained using the pseudoinverse of
the matrix ,
cies will yield identical values when evaluated at the
sampling times {tk}, rendering the matrix singular and
making reconstruction impossible. Therefore there
still exist restrictions on {fi} in order to ensure success-
ful reconstruction, but with careful choice of the sam-
pling times, the alias-free bandwidth can be extended
to a bandwidth that is many times greater than half the
mean sample rate. The key advantage for nonuniform
sampling is that information about the carrier frequency
can be obtained without having to sample at twice the
carrier frequency. To accurately capture the encoded
data, all that is required is a mean sample rate scaling
with the information bandwidth, a much less stringent
requirement than scaling with the carrier frequency.
NONUNIFORM PHOTONIC SAMPLING SYSTEM
Experimental System Design
Figure5 diagrams the general experimental setup of
our nonuniformly sampled photonic ADC.1113 We used
an actively mode-locked laser with a pulse repetition rate
of 10GHz to act as a grid of sampling times from which to
choose. Individual pulses were then selected pseudoran-
domly using an amplitude modulator configured to act
as an onoff switch. A programmable pulse-pattern gen-
erator (PPG) controlled the transmission of pulses, with
the pattern designed such that the mean time interval
between two successive pulses was m=10ns. The PPG
was clocked with the same 10-GHz reference oscillator
driving the laser, thereby ensuring that the PPG output
would be synchronous with the optical pulses entering
the modulator. The length of the pattern and therefore
the total measurement time was set to be 20ms. After
generating the nonuniformly spaced train of sampling
pulses, the incoming RF signal was captured using a
second amplitude modulator with a 3-dB bandwidth of
20 GHz. The encoded pulse train was then converted
to the electrical domain by a photodiode and passed to
an electrical track-and-hold (T/H) circuit. This created

c = `^ h j y ,
T 1
O-E conversion
Sampling pulse generation Signal encoding and quantization
which can then be used to 10-GHz repetition rate
approximate the frequency MLL EOM EDFA EOM PD T/H ADC
spectrum of the original signal.
It is important to note that CLK PPG
signal reconstruction requires
knowledge of the sampling
PD
times, which has consequences Nonuniform CLK Uniform
for the hardware implementa- 10-MHz reference CLK
tion of a nonuniform sampling
system. Aliasing will manifest
itself as degeneracy in the rows Figure 5. Diagram of the nonuniform photonic sampling system. CLK, clock; EDFA, erbium-
of , that is to say that basis doped fiber amplifier; EOM, electro-optic modulator; MLL, mode-locked laser; O-E, optical
functions of aliased frequen- to electrical.

284 JOHNS HOPKINS APL TECHNICAL DIGEST, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 (2012)
 PHOTONIC ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERSION

a series of held voltages for the digitizer to analyze. Note
that the input bandwidth of the system is still determined
by the photonic sampling operation and can be greater
than 50 GHz with commercially available technology.
The purpose of the T/H circuit was to allow the ADC to
be uniformly clocked, thus converting the nonuniformly
sampled signal to a uniformly sampled signal. Quantiza-
tion is easier to implement with an electronic ADC when
the clock is periodic, and the nonuniform-to-uniform
conversion facilitates the use of commercially available
high-resolution ADCs to perform this function. Crucial
to these experiments was the synchronous nonuniform
clocking of the T/H circuit with an electronic replica of
the sampling pulse train, which ensured that none of the
encoded pulses (and thus signal samples) were missed by
the electronic digitizer. Finally, the T/H output was digi-
tized by a 14-bit ADC, which was clocked uniformly at
the rate of 100MHz. The timing of the uniform clock,
which was synchronous with the master laser oscillator,
was adjusted with respect to the T/H output such that
the uniform sample times always fell approximately in
the middle of the held voltages and not on an edge.
Experimental Results and Discussion
To demonstrate the alias-defeating capability of this
technique, two-tone X-band signals from a frequency
synthesizer were sampled by the system and recon-
structed using the algorithm described in Signal Recon-
struction. The results are shown in Fig. 6 for several
different frequency separations of
the two-tone signal. The nonuni- (a) 0
form sampling techniques imple-
mented by the system yielded an 10
alias-free bandwidth of 5 GHz,
even though the mean sample 20
rate was 100MHz. As can be seen
from the spectra, the system is able 30
(b) 0
to unambiguously identify signals
that are separated by many tradi-
Power (dBc)
would therefore require some method of pulse multiplica-
tion in order to be practical. This is an area of research
that will be investigated in the future. We are also cur-
rently developing a high-repetition-rate, low-noise laser
that promises to provide a dramatic increase in the
achievable signal-to-noise performance.
We have developed an architecture that capitalizes
on the very wide bandwidth of photonic sampling and
the data-management efficiency of digital alias-free
signal processing, enabling a single hardware system
to simultaneously observe many signals across multiple
frequency bands without scanning and without parallel
filtered receivers. There will be no instantaneous blind-
ness to signals at any frequency, as would occur when
scanning one frequency region while a signal resides in
another, nor will there be static frequency blind spots,
as would occur in parallel filtered receivers. This work
represents the first and only demonstration, to our
knowledge, of a nonuniformly sampled photonic ADC
and is presently being evaluated as a very wide input
bandwidth (covering from 1GHz up to 100GHz) elec-
tronic receiver to support applications with a very wide
processing bandwidth (up to 50GHz in a single output).
This approach will improve the receiver probability of
detection by eliminating frequency blindness and signif-
icantly improve the size, weight, and power requirements
as compared with parallel receiver systems, for which a
50-GHz processing bandwidth would be inconceivable
for all but the largest of platforms.
f1 = 9.17 GHz, f2 = 9.30 GHz
f1 = 7.08 GHz, f2 = 9.30 GHz

10
tional Nyquist zones (a Nyquist
zone for this case would span 20
50MHz). In Fig.6c, the two tones
are separated by the equivalent of 30
74 traditional Nyquist zones. The (c) 0
signal-to-noise-floor ratio for this f1 = 5.60 GHz, f2 = 9.30 GHz
system is limited primarily by the 10
poor amplitude noise performance
of the actively mode-locked laser 20
used as the master optical clock.
30
Significant improvement in noise 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5 9.0 9.5
can be achieved by using a pas- Frequency (GHz)
sively mode-locked laser, although
these sources typically have lower Figure 6. Reconstructed RF spectra for two-tone input signals. Input signal frequencies are
pulse repetition rates. A nonuni- indicated as f1 and f2. Mean sample rate was 100MHz, and the equivalent Nyquist-limited
form sampling system using this bandwidth is therefore 50MHz. The input frequencies are accurately identified over an oper-
type of laser as the optical clock ating bandwidth of up to 80 Nyquist zones. dBc, decibels relative to the carrier.

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285
P.T.CALLAHAN,M.L.DENNIS,ANDT.R.CLARKJR.
FUTURE WORK
Photonic analog-to-digital conversion architectures
have long been recognized as having the potential to
provide significant advantages in bandwidth, timing
precision, and timing stability. In our work we have
focused on designing a system architecture that will
maximally realize the advantages of photonics while
retaining the ability to utilize the high performance
and maturity of electronic digitization and processing.
Experimental demonstration of a photonic sampling
system based on nonuniform sampling techniques has
shown the capability of such methods to defeat tradi-
tional signal aliasing. This suggests that optimization
of the signal reconstruction algorithms could further
extend the alias-free bandwidth of nonuniform sam-
pling systems. The vast literature available in the related
field of compressed sensing presents a fertile ground for
further inquiry. Future work will also include optimiza-
tion of the hardware implementation to better align the
functionalities offered by photonic technology with the
signal-processing techniques.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The work presented here was per-
formed through internal research and development pro-
grams with support from APL's Precision Engagement
Business Area and the Air and Missile Defense Depart-
ment. This material was also based on work supported
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) under DoD Award W911NF-08-1-0243. Any opin-
ions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this publication are those of the authors and
do not necessarily reflect the views of DARPA or the DoD.
The Authors
PatrickT. MichaelL. ThomasR.
Callahan Dennis ClarkJr.
simulations on nonuniform sampling. Michael L. Dennis and Thomas R. Clark Jr. are Principal Professional Staff
members in the Electro-Optical and Infrared Systems and Technologies Group and were co-Principal Investigators for
the APL internal research and development and DARPA programs that funded the concept and laboratory demonstra-
tions reported in this article. For further information on the work reported here, contact Thomas R. Clark Jr. His e-mail
address is thomas.clark@jhuapl.edu.
The Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest can be accessed electronically at www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest.
286
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Patrick T. Callahan was previously a member of
the Associate Professional Staff in the Electro-
Optical and Infrared Systems and Technology
Group in APLs Air and Missile Defense Depart-
ment and is now with the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology. For this project,
he was responsible for assembling and character-
izing the prototype system, as well as conducting
JOHNS HOPKINS APL TECHNICAL DIGEST, VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 (2012)